


How Far Can Too Far Go?

by Ywain Penbrydd (penbrydd)



Series: Fade-Touched (An adventure in organ fondling) [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: A wizard's staff has a knob on the end, Anders has a death wish, Fisting - Fenris style, Heart-fondling, How many references to other fandoms can I get in this fic?, Humor, Inappropriate Humor, Justice's lyrium fetish, Kink Negotiation, Legendary Warden Stamina, M/M, More humour, Past Violence, Some angst, erotic asphyxiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-08 17:15:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3217160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penbrydd/pseuds/Ywain%20Penbrydd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders and Fenris spend an awful lot of time at each others' throats, for people with so much in common. Perhaps all it takes is a little bit of throttling, a couple of head injuries, and a strange invitation to bring them together for a night.</p><p>But, Fenris is covered in lyrium. And Justice is extremely fond of lyrium. And for all that Fenris isn't a fan of Anders, he likes Justice even less. Mayhem ensues. And smut. Smutty mayhem. (It's my favourite kind!) And perhaps, the three of them can come to some sort of arrangement -- or at least a less-loathly tolerance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hawke was in love with Anders, and Anders was in love with Hawke. There was no mistaking the signs, if one knew either of them well. They lived and breathed a haze of each others' well-timed jabs and gibes, Templar jokes, and bawdy songs about wizards, with time apart for Anders to work in the clinic and Hawke's endeavors to teach the Arishok to enjoy chess. (Fenris insisted the game embodied the Qun, at its very essence, while still leaving room for outrageous designs, and that the game would be the salvation of them all.) And, from time to time, Hawke would drag someone home with him, and Anders would pretend to be jealous for the five minutes it took to rinse the spikeweed and orichalcum from his hands and size up the offering.

And then there was that time Hawke brought home Isabela, but even Varric won't talk about that one. Bring it up and Hawke will pick at his nails, Anders will find something fascinating about the floor, and Isabela will add another splintered wound to the tabletop and all-too-cheerfully order another round. Some things, no one will admit to, even when they weren't involved.

There was, Fenris thought, something sickeningly right about the two of them together. Two smart-mouthed, devastatingly flirtatious, apostate mages, clearly cut from the same cloth, the one an abomination and the other a drunk. He would have loved to hate them. He had loved hating them, for a while, but they were useful. The kind of flirtatious drunken abominations that could get you back out of anything they got you into. Or anything you got yourself into. Or anything your blighted windbag former master got you into, Maker take his soul and grind it. He might almost call them his friends -- aside from the part where he didn't have friends, didn't want friends, and doubly didn't want anyone regularly putting his name in the same sentence with the names of two mages. It was bad enough that people referred to him as Varric's 'Broody Death Elf'. 

And that's where it started, he thought. With Varric.

"Oh, no, you don't get to walk out of here without paying what you owe me, tall, dark, and stupid. That didn't work last time, and it won't work, this time." Varric kicked a chair, and the human dropped into it as it smacked into the back of his knees. The dwarf leaned over his shoulder, almost companionably. "Don't make me bring the elf into this."

Fenris groaned and rested his aching head against the bottle in his hand. Even in the Hanged Man, perhaps _especially_ in the Hanged Man, he drank from the bottle. It was just safer. And if this pounding in his head didn't stop, soon, he'd need a few more bottles. "Please. Don't make him bring the elf into this. The elf will be extremely upset at being dragged into a certain loud-mouthed dwarf's financial affairs."

"The only thing worse than a drunken Broody Death Elf is an upset one," Varric threw in, and the human squirmed in his seat, before slapping a fistful of silver onto the table. 

After Varric's 'business acquaintance' left them, Fenris got the dwarf's attention by barely missing his head with an empty bottle that shattered against the back of the fireplace. Even Fenris's fingers twitched at the sound, and the angle of his ears shifted, flattening in annoyance. "I am _a_ weapon, dwarf. I am not _your_ weapon. That honour belongs to your Bianca. What would she think?"

"Well, as long as I'm not feeling up your long bits and checking your tautness, I don't think she's got what to complain about." Varric laughed and grabbed his flagon of what passed for ale in this dump.

"I need more wine," Fenris sighed, pressing a thumb against the curve where his nose met his eyesocket.

"Lucky you!" A bottle was pressed into his other hand, and his eyes eventually focused enough to find Hawke on the other side of it.

"I knew there was a reason I hadn't killed you in your sleep, mage." After wrestling the cork from the bottle, Fenris took a long swallow and tipped his head back with an uncomfortable sound.

"If I knew my life was so cheap, I'd have started buying you wine sooner!" Hawke's ass hit a chair, solidly, and his boots thudded onto the table.

After a moment, Hawke started again. "Don't--"

But, the hands were already on the sides of Fenris's face. "You're touching me. Do you have a death wish? I could assist you with that."

"The fact that all of my knuckles are still intact tells me you don't just _look_ like shit, today, Fenris. And I spent enough time in Ferelden to be extremely familiar with shit in all its multitudinous varieties."

Anders. He hadn't even been able to feel the magic. The mage maybe had a point, but Fenris wasn't about to admit it. "Why are you touching me, _mage_?" This time it wasn't just an observation, but an accusation.

"If you prefer, I could just leave you to the gentle caresses of your aches and pains," Anders offered, fingers tracing lightly over the paths of the lyrium etchings, as his thumbs settled behind the elf's ears.

"If I become less drunk, you are paying for me to become more drunk," Fenris declared, and Anders took it for the acceptance it was.

"Be careful with that. This isn't the first bottle. Or the third," Varric chimed in, from somewhere to the side.

"I think it's well within my power to avoid disturbing a man's drunken comfort, even while I rid him of his pains. I have a particular talent for that, actually."

The last went unremarked. They'd all learnt there were some things one didn't ask Anders about -- pretty much anything before he'd met them. But, none of them really talked about what came before. Well, none of them except Varric, but you could at least be pretty sure Varric was full of shit. Mostly. Usually. Fenris would admit the 'Broody Death Elf' stories were pretty accurate, though. Maybe more accurate than Varric realised.

A low sound slipped out of Fenris, as the magic crept through his skin, racing along the lines of lyrium and washing away the worst of the pain. He hadn't realised how much he hurt until it stopped. Then it was just his throbbing head, still cradled in that abomination's wonderful, cool hands. No, that wasn't right. Abomination. Wretched mage-beast. Spite! Malice! ... leaching the ache from between his temples, until his ears tingled and his skin buzzed along every silvery-blue line. A rumble of delicious contentment started low in his chest -- ABOMINATION. TOUCHING.

"Enough!" Fenris suddenly shot bolt upright, cracking his head soundly against the mage's chin, as he came to his feet. "Get your hands off me. _Keep_ your hands off me, abomination."

Anders stumbled back into the wall, spitting blood as he healed his own bitten tongue. "There's the Broody Death Elf we know and love!"

"Yes, yes, you hate mages, we know. Don't break the healer. I was using that and so were you." Hawke took another swig of his drink and smacked the flagon onto the edge of the table. "Sit down and have another drink, before you hurt something."

"After he hurts something," Anders complained, still rubbing his chin as he made his way to the seat beside Hawke.

"Did he break anything?" Hawke asked, mischief gleaming in the corners of his eyes. "Better let me check..."

"And you wonder where I get the ideas in those books I keep writing. Keep it up, you two. You'll get a whole chapter to yourselves in the next one," Varric teased, as Hawke thoroughly explored Anders's mouth for damage, tongue first.

"I had better never find myself in any impassioned embraces in your books, dwarf," Fenris warned, sitting back down with his wine.

"You can't even read! It's not like you'd notice!" Varric protested.

"Isabela can read just fine. What _did_ you think we were doing alone together, all that time?" Smugness rolled off the elf in waves. "She is teaching me to read. Using your books. She has read them all to me, so far."

"What did I think you were doing? I thought she was putting her unspeakable talents to good use on your pointy-eared flesh! She sure talks like that's what she's doing with you!" More supposed ale went into Varric's mouth. "Wild tales about secret Tevinter sex acts and how your tattoos light up when you get-- you know!"

For a split second, Fenris could swear Anders had blue eyes. Gleaming, electric blue, in exactly the way the mage's golden eyes weren't.

"I wouldn't know. And neither would she." Fenris stretched his shoulders and tipped his chin up, dismissively.

"Wait, wait. I get 'she wouldn't know'," Anders butted in, "but, _you_ wouldn't know?"

"I don't do those sorts of things. They're unappealing." The elf shrugged and looked away. "You know exactly how much I appreciate being touched."

"Hey, you almost appreciated it for a minute, earlier. A whole minute!" Anders teased.

"The key word there is 'almost'." Fenris paused, studying the mage. "Did I break any of your teeth?"

"Nah, I just bit my tongue. Takes more than that to break me."

"Pity."

"Nice of you to ask, though, you big softie."

And then Anders's tankard of spice tea hit the floor, knocked out of his hand as Fenris leapt across the table, into a crouch at the edge of it, and grabbed him by the throat, bending his neck back over the back of the chair.

"Say it again," Fenris growled.

The smile that lit Anders's face wasn't pleasant, but it was saucy. His golden eyes glowed in what light could reach them. This smile was strangely dangerous. This smile probably accounted for more of his scars than he'd ever admit.

"Big... softie," he choked out. "Can't keep your hands off me."

"Man's got a point," Hawke remarked into his flagon, looking entirely unconcerned with the elf currently choking the life out of his beloved. If it were serious, at least one of them would be glowing.

Fenris let go and stepped back, still standing on the table, wiping his hands on his leggings. "Disgusting..." he muttered, looking more confused than disgusted.

"Oooh! Pointy and gorgeous is on the table!" came a delighted cry, from the end of the room, as Isabela entered with as much ale as she could heft in both hands, which was quite a bit. "You going to do a little dance and take it all off, for us, or do I have to buy you some more wine, first?"

Still coughing, Anders flicked a sovereign into one of her cups and offered a thumbs up. Fenris was pretty sure the mage actually did have a death wish, and the thought gave him pause, as it often did, when it crossed his mind. The power to rain fire from the sky and heal nearly any wound, and the mage just wanted someone to kill him. But, it wasn't like that, really. In battle, he was unfaltering; never stepped in front of anything he could step away from, didn't stand too close to the front of a fight, and brought down lyrium-powered wrath on anything that got too close to any of them. In that last, he supposed, they weren't that different, and my, wasn't that an uncomfortable thought. Stepping back off the table, he washed it down with more wine. Shitty, Lowtown mushroom wine.

"Why, exactly, would I do something that might inspire that nug-brained abomination to put his hands on me, again?" Fenris growled, glancing around the room in case any of the bottles from earlier might still have more in them.

"Again? Ooooh! What have I been missing?" Isabela set down the ale and perched on the edge of the table, looking intrigued and terribly gossipy. Reminded Anders of Zevran, when she did that, though he'd only spent a week in the assassin's company. 'A forgiveable weakness for Antivan accents,' the Warden-Commander had called that.

"Oh, you know, wild debauchery, dark Tevinter sex secrets, temptations of the Anderfels." Anders leaned back, resting the back of his chair against the wall. "I groped his face a little. Terribly titillating."

Hawke's face turned alarming shades of red, as he pressed his knuckles against his forehead, holding his breath not to laugh. 

"Oh, yeah," Varric added, "with delicious sound effects. Did you know elves purr? I didn't know that."

There was a line, Anders knew, and the dwarf had crossed it. He could feel Fenris tense, and the way the air cooled ever so slightly around the elf, even from halfway down the table. "Knock it off, Varric."

Fenris shot a surprised look at the mage, whose face was buried in his tankard, not looking at any of them.

"Too much?" Varric asked.

"Do you like your organs inside your body?" Anders asked, tilting his head toward Fenris, who looked _entirely fascinated_ by the fact he'd run out of wine.

"I've had cat piss better than the wine, here," Fenris remarked, totally changing the subject in the worst possible way.

Anders and Varric answered simultaneously.

"Do I want to know why you were drinking cat piss?" Anders squinted down the side of his tankard at Fenris.

Varric's head bobbed in an exaggerated nod. "Which is, of course, why you've only had four bottles of it."

Fenris just ignored Anders. "Yes. I kept hoping it would improve as I became more intoxicated. It has, instead, gotten worse. If you will excuse me, I've had enough bad wine, for the night."

"Retreating to your cellars, for the good stuff?" Hawke asked, squinting into his flagon, as if considering a similar choice.

"That merchant had excellent taste. If he lived, I might ask after his connections," the elf admitted, setting the bottle on the table, as he edged around it, toward Varric's side.

"If he lived, you wouldn't know about his taste in wine," Anders pointed out, "and you wouldn't have a half-trashed estate in Hightown to call your own."

"Are you running out of good wine, my dark and pointy friend?" Isabela asked. "Come see me, tomorrow. We'll arrange something to keep those cellars full."

"I hesitate to speculate what you might ask, in return." Fenris's eyebrow arched up, as he came eye to eye with Isabela at the end of the table.

"Oh, you know me, I might just lighten your jingle a little." She moved her legs, to let him pass.

"Jangle your jingle, she means," Varric joked.

"If I wanted to jangle his jingle, I'd give him the wine for free."

Across the table, Hawke finally lost it, resting his head on the edge of the table as he cackled.

"Don't mind him." Anders clapped a hand on Hawke's shoulder and stood, the chair clacking back to an upright position. "He started early, tonight. Rough week."

To Fenris's discerning eye, the mage could not have looked more raw with his skin off. He squinted and rubbed his forehead, as he headed for the door. "I never pay Hawke any mind. Why should this time be different?"

Anders looked at Hawke, looked at Fenris, and went after the elf. "I'll walk with you."

"Should you not be more concerned with your lover?"

"He needs to be drunk, right now. Drunk and with people who will keep him laughing." Anders shrugged. "Varric and Isabela are good at that. Both of those, really."

"And you can't be funny? Or is it just you can't be drunk?" Fenris squinted sideways at him.

"Can't be drunk. Both, maybe." Anders paused. "And you still look like shit."

"Charming, as always, mage."

"If I was trying to be charming, you'd have me by the neck."

"You may be correct."

They walked in silence, down an alley, here, across a road, there. Fenris wondered what he'd done to deserve the sudden, blazing, mage-bright 'kick me' sign, that had decided to walk with him. "You know that I am able to care for myself, yes?"

"You don't eat, you barely sleep, and you drown your sorrows in vats of wine. I guess that could count as caring for yourself. It's no wonder you have headaches."

The mage had a fair point. However... "Two of those could be said of you, as well, and the third in the not so distant past."

"Never wine," Anders protested. "The hangovers are horrible."

"Hangovers?" Fenris had heard the word, but never got a grip on the concept.

"Yeah, you know, the thing where you drink way too much, and then you wake up in the morning and throw up a lot and pray for death, because everything hurts like you've been beaten stupid by a hurlock with a mace?"

"I have never had this experience. No wonder you've stopped drinking." It seemed much more sensible, if that was the consequence.

"I'd still be drinking, if Justice was a little more tolerant. I'd be back in the Hanged Man, four cups down, and singing bawdy songs about wizards' staves." He elbowed Fenris, companionably, without thinking about it. "A wizard's staff's got a knob on the end, you know."

"So, I have heard you sing. I can't interpret that in any way that isn't utterly disgusting." Oddly, Fenris didn't find it in himself to recoil from the elbow, even attached to an apostate abomination, as it was.

"It's because you don't like wizards. Or maybe you don't like knobs, either."

"I certainly don't like wizards' knobs."

"Maybe because you've been keeping company with the wrong wizards. Hawke's got an amazing knob, and a real talent for putting it to use."

"I'd really rather not envision the uses Hawke puts his knob to. I've heard enough from Isabela to make me want to boil my ears clean."

Anders shot a calculating glance at Fenris. "How much does Isabela know about the uses Hawke puts his knob to?"

"More than I want to." Resigned disgust dripped from every word.

"Oh, hey, the all-night, by the Chantry, is still open. If we stop off, I can grab some things and show you the pleasures of Orlesian cooking. You know, since I can't remember the last time I ate, and I doubt you can, either." Anders pointed off in that direction. "It's right across the plaza from your house..."

"I have nothing in which to cook, mage." Of all the objections, that one made it out of his mouth.

"I need a metal bowl, a clay bowl, and two bricks. That's it, for cooking utensils. I bet we can find that in the wreckage." Anders smiled temptingly, eyes all aglitter. "Just think: warm food. In your own house. And all you have to do is put up with me a little longer."

"You tempt me, mage." Fenris considered the offer. Warm food, without having to pay attention to more than one possible threat, while he ate. "You're buying?"

"I'm buying."

"Make sure you buy enough. I'm very hungry, and you look thin." His stomach punctuated the final sentence, uninvited. 

"I look thin, because I am thin. Long, lean beauty of the Anderfels, tempered by a decade of dogs and shit." Bright, jovial bitterness spilled out of the mage, absently, like a rupture in some pustule he'd been too busy to tend.

"And buy yourself something to drink. I have only wine, and the water..." Fenris grimaced. "I would not trust the water in my mouth, nor in the mouth of someone cooking for me. Even someone tempered by dogs and shit."

"Careful, people might think you're sweet on me, or something," Anders teased, turning away to head toward the shop.

"There are no people here, and you know better." Struck by an uncomfortable thought, Fenris squinted at the mage's back. "You are the one offering to cook me a hot meal, is it not more likely people would think you are sweet on me, if any of them were looking?"

"What a ghastly thought. Unimaginably distasteful, isn't it?" Anders smiled over his shoulder, in that suicidal way he had. "Whatever would I need with someone just as broken and scared as I am, when I have Hawke... who is... just as broken and scared as I am, if a little more outrageously bold in his intents."

"Damaged, not broken." Fenris protested, quietly. "And I am not scared. I have no fear left in me."

"Damaged, broken, what's the difference--"

With the shadow of the Chantry on them, Fenris reached out and yanked Anders around to face him. "You get out of bed, of your own volition. You do what _you_ feel you must. You fight for yourself, and what matters to _you_. You bite the hand that holds the leash, however much I may think you need that leash. You are not broken. I don't know what it would take to break you."

"I do," Anders breathed, looking at the ground between them, clenching his fists as if it would stop the world from spinning, and trusting the iron grip of Fenris's hand to keep him up, if he lost his own hold. They stood a long time in silence. Finally, he looked up. "Thank you. Now, let's get to the shop and back, before the Templars catch us standing around like we own the place."

"Is it truly so bad, under their watch?" Fenris asked, letting go as they crossed the plaza.

Anders took a deep breath, and Fenris clapped a hand on his shoulder. "No, I mean it. Honest question," the elf clarified.

The breath raced back out of Anders, and he reached for the door of the shop. "Ask me another time, when I'm not cold, hungry, and standing in front of the Chantry."

"I will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can blame Fallen London for the mushroom wine. It just seemed like a very Darktown thing to do, and you can't convince me the Hanged Man doesn't serve some sincerely questionable things.
> 
> Also, credit for getting me off my ass to even start writing this fucker goes to effingshamwow. You're a glorious bastard, my friend. I hope this turns out as well as you hoped.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still no fucking. An unspeakable quantity of knob jokes and Anders pretending he's fine.

It took less than an hour, for Fenris to ask again. 

Anders had started a fire in one bowl and propped the other one over it, full of cheese. The point, he'd explained to Fenris, was to melt the cheese and dip bread and fruit into it. Minimal actual cooking, minimal cleanup. While the cheese melted, Fenris started a fire in the fireplace, and Anders compulsively tidied the room, burning out cobwebs and compressing swaths of dust into bricks.

"Mage, you don't need to clean my house," Fenris sighed.

"I'm about to try to eat in your house. I prefer not to have cobwebs in my fondue. It looks like you shook the dust off the bed and kicked the corpses into the closet." Anders stacked another brick of filth under the window. "Did you even change the sheets?"

"The only thing I take off to sleep is my boots. It seemed like a waste."

Anders stopped and looked at the elf. "Imagine with me, Fenris. Clean sheets, a hot bath, a lock on the door, windows that aren't broken, food in the pantry. A place that when you get back to it, you know it's yours, because it smells like you."

"Smells like me? I am not one of your Fereldan dogs."

"No, I mean, think about it. Hawke's place? It's not just his, but you can tell which room is his, when you walk past the door. It just _smells like Hawke_. Or my clinic. Maybe that's more that I smell like it, but you know that smell. It's always on my hands. There's just something about waking up in a place that smells like you belong in it. Easier to get to sleep, too."

"I thought you didn't sleep."

"I sleep! When I have to..." When he'd worked until he couldn't stand up; when he passed out into his manifesto, smearing the last page across his cheek; when Hawke dragged him into bed and fucked him into unconsciousness. That last was his favourite, without question.

"As do I. Why is it more important that I sleep well, than you?"

"Because watching your suffering annoys the shit out of me," Anders complained, rubbing the corner of his eye with the back of his wrist, as he glanced around the room, judging his chances of getting through the meal without ending up with cobwebs in his mouth.

Fenris laughed. Not the half-hearted chuckles he occasionally offered Hawke, after a bad joke, but clutching the wall, tears streaming down his face, he howled with laughter.

"That... that is the most absurd--" Picking up a sliver of bread crust, Fenris poked at the bowl of cheese. "Is this melted enough? How can you tell? Because I think you should sit down and eat something before you get any more delirious."

"I'm not delirious. You're distracting." Anders threw a pillow on the floor next to the busted end table that held their supper. "I can tell when you haven't been sleeping. You get that squinty look, like your teeth hurt. Hurts me just looking at you."

"No, mage, that's just you noticing your own pains." Fenris coiled into himself at one end of the table, sitting on the edge of the hearth, just out of the reach of the flame. "Speaking of which, you were going to tell me about the Templars. No propaganda, this time."

"No propaganda?" Something shifted in Anders's face, as the suicide grin split it again. A shimmer, like the heat rising off a metal roof seemed to surround him, as his fingers unfastened the front of his robe. He shrugged out of it, letting the belt hold the robe at his waist, absently tying the sleeves together at the same height.

It wasn't until Anders lifted his head again that the shadows shifted enough for Fenris to make out _that_ scar. Certainly the mage's chest was littered with lesser marks -- cuts, burns, bites -- he'd been a Warden. But, that one stood out, and Fenris couldn't take his eyes off it, even as he started to recognise some unpleasant patterns in the other scars.

Anders lifted a finger and started counting scars, a ghost of blue dancing at the edges of his eyes. "Darkspawn, darkspawn, dwarf, cat, Templar, drunken incident with an Antivan Crow, darkspawn, Templar, Templar, Templar, Templar, cat, Templar, demon, Templar, pregnant elf, Templar..." He kept counting. 

"Most of these were actually before I left the Circle. It's why they're under other things," he muttered, between scars, still not counting the huge one in the centre of his chest.

"What did you do?" Fenris asked, softly, no accusation in his voice, for a change.

"I wanted to go outside. I like outside. It's got trees and sunshine, and it smells less like sweat, shit, and death. I'm a healer. I get to smell a lot of sweat, shit, and death." Anders looked down his chest, toying with the edge of the largest scar.

"And now you work in Darktown," Fenris pointed out, with a hint of a smile.

"If nothing else kills me, the irony will," Anders laughed. 

"Templar," he said, finally, tapping the last scar.

"You're a lucky man," Fenris admitted. The scar looked brutal, like the mage had narrowly escaped much worse.

"You have no idea." And there was that smile, again. That dangerous, unnerving smile. Anders turned around, putting his back in the firelight, and Fenris sucked in a sharp gasp.

It wasn't just that the mage's back was even more complicated than his chest, but that he had a matching scar. He hadn't _escaped_ the end of that strike.

Fenris found himself on his feet, without thinking, stepping in for a closer look. "How are you alive?" he asked, squinting at the ragged edge of the scar, and Anders twitched at the breath across his back.

"Justice. I don't really know anything else. I can't remember it all, just flashes." _Rolan's melted sword running down his arm..._

"This isn't just a stab, is it?" Fenris bent his knees to get a better angle. "Is that a burn? Lamp oil? Grease trap?"

"A sword." Anders rubbed his face, tiredly. "That's the part where his sword melted and ran out of me. Nothing like molten metal to leave you with a fine, decorative mark."

Fenris stopped breathing, and the world spun under him. He caught himself with a hand on Anders's hip. Molten metal. Branded, scarred, and painted. A panicked sound leapt out between his teeth, before he could stop it.

"Fenris...?" Anders looked concerned.

Fenris growled, still lost inside his head. Just another moment. He breathed words, barely audible. "There is nothing. This is nothing. Nothing at all. There is nothing. This is nothing."

"Broody? You still with me?" Anders awkwardly ran a hand through the hair of the elf clutching his hip.

"Nothing... Mage?" It sounded almost like relief.

"I have a name, you know."

"Do you? Does Hawke know it? Because I don't." Fenris straightened up, looking like a cat that hadn't landed on its feet, hands lingering a few seconds longer on Anders's bare skin, until he could be sure of his balance.

"I didn't think you'd noticed!" This time, the smile was honest and surprised, and Anders blinked his blue eyes at the elf.

Fenris rubbed his palms against his thighs, as if trying to wipe the magic off his hands. "I'm illiterate, not stupid. You don't have a name. You have a description. 'Anders'. I might as well call you 'mage'. There are thousands more, either way."

Golden-eyed again, Anders sat by the table, grabbing a scrap of bread to dip in the cheese. "Sit down and eat, before the cheese burns."

A few bites later, when Fenris had joined him, he finished the thought. "My mother has my name. When I'm free, I'll go home, and she'll give it back to me. I'm just Anders, now. It's name enough." He gave a startled cough, as another thought occurred to him. "Or Justice, I guess. You could call us Justice."

"Or I could not. How did you lose your name? Aren't you free, now?" Fenris actually sounded confused.

"You have to understand, my parents weren't mages. There was no magic in our family. A mage _needs_ other mages, in order to learn how to be safe, just like any child needs someone to teach them how to cook without burning down the house or why you don't just punch everyone who insults you. Basic survival needs, you know?" Anders stuffed his mouth with bread, to buy time, but Fenris wouldn't let it drop.

"And?"

"I didn't know any better, and there was an accident. It should have been all right. If there had been any mages in the community, I could have gone and studied with them. They would have taught me how to handle myself. But, the nearest Circle was in Orlais." This time, Anders reached for the wine, with a low breath of 'shut up', as he poured some into his mouth. "Sorry."

"The story is worth the wine. So, you were a dangerous child."

"All children are dangerous," Anders insisted. "The Circle was in Orlais. When I heard my parents talking, I thought they would _bring me_ to the Circle, so I could learn to be a mage. Instead, my father called the Templars."

More wine. Much more, this time. "You should open another bottle. I've never told this story."

"Not to Hawke?" Fenris asked, around a mouthful of cheese and apple, prying the cork out of the next bottle.

"Fereldan noble Hawke? No."

"Fereldan noble _apostate mage_ Hawke."

"Hawke's father was a mage. It's different. I don't want to ruin what he had, with what I hadn't. He's got enough guilt."

"And you like his knob."

"I love his knob. I've known a lot of wizards' knobs, over the years, and I couldn't ask for a finer knob or a finer wizard. I'd write rhapsodic odes to Hawke's knob, if Justice would quit writing manifestos, every time we pick up a pen."

"That's disgusting." Fenris paused in the middle of a bite. "Weren't you telling me why you don't have a name?"

"Hey, you're the one who dragged Hawke and his knob into this conversation," Anders reminded him, before loading up on bread and cheese, to hold up the conversation some more.

"I was twelve, when the Templars came and put me in chains. Do you know-- You. Of course you do." Swilling more wine, Anders paused to gather his wits. " _Twelve_. They chained me, as my mother wept, and my father held her back, that smug look on his face, like he'd finally won, and I was someone else's problem, now. 

"They paraded me through the edge of Nevarra, past the staring masks of Orlais, and through the land of dogs and shit, all the way to the Circle Tower on Lake Calenhad, chained and loaded full of magebane, like a prize oliphaunt. We picked up other mages, along the way. Children, like me. No one spoke to me, or any of us, except to give orders, but they all had something to say _about me_. Specifically me." More wine, the bottle inadvertently clattering against his teeth, faint licks of blue flaring around his fingers, dancing down the line of his cheeks. "They called me Anders. By the time we got to Ghislain, it was the only thing I answered to. They'd never asked my name. They barely spoke my language."

 _Justice_ was upset, and Fenris could tell, the lyrium in his skin glowing faintly, resonating with the spirit's offence. This, more than anything, was what bothered him about Anders. The mage got under his skin, pretty literally, every time he got upset.

"I thought we would stop in Val Royeaux. I thought I was meant to study at the White Spire. I could've been some charming Orlesian mage, all candy-faced and full of delicate butterfly-lies. But, no. We kept going. Down into the kingdom of the Dog Lords. The old Alamarri lands of shit, dogs, and dogshit. By the time we reached the Circle Tower in Ferelden, I didn't have a name. I was Anders, I talked funny, and nobody was listening."

"You sound like a Fereldan. I would never have noticed."

"It took me three years to get rid of the accent. I learnt to read it, and I learnt to speak it. I can also read Tevene, Orlesian, and Antivan, but I've been told I should never again try to speak Antivan." One of the mage's eyes gleamed gold, with amusement, but his hands still shook. "He said he'd set the Crows on me, if I didn't stop butchering it. Hah. Speaking of knobs I've known and loved..."

"Another mage?"

"Not hardly. Just an Antivan dandy with amazing taste in leather. Friend of a friend. It was just his knob I was in love with, the rest of him was a little much." Anders finished the first bottle of wine and set the empty bottle aside, reaching for another piece of bread. "So, that's enough about me. It's been twenty-odd years, and I'm just Anders, now. Wouldn't know what else to answer to."

"You're Anders, like I'm Fenris," the elf remarked, cramming a slice of cheese-dipped apple into his mouth and holding up a finger.

"Am I?"

"I came into being, whole and entire, brands still burning, and when I didn't know myself, I was given a name. Maybe I was someone else, once, but I'm Fenris, now." He talked while chewing. It should have been unflattering, but it was just another reminder of how rarely he seemed to eat.

"We have more in common than you like to think," Anders teased.

"Unlike some people, I didn't make a deal with a demon," Fenris shot back, and Anders just stared across the table at him, dead eyed, one eyebrow raised.

"I... don't get to say that any more, do I?" Fenris rubbed his face with one hand and looked into the fire.

"No, you really don't. Hawke's still a little annoyed about that, but that's why they're _demons_. It's really hard to say no. They offer you what you most want, in all the world."

"What did he offer you?" Fenris's fingers danced in the air above the flames, changing the currents and the shape of the fire.

"Nothing, really. Nothing I didn't think I could accomplish without him. He was my friend, and I did it to save his life." Anders reached for the wine, again, and Justice was strangely silent. "I know you know what it's like to be alone. It's a comfort, at first. It's safe. And then it's just empty. And now? Now, I guess I'll never be alone again. _Really. Never._ "

"You insist you did nothing wrong, and yet here you are advising me against your mistakes." Amusement lit Fenris's eyes.

"It wasn't wrong, morally. It just may have been a questionable choice for me, personally --" Anders stopped, suddenly, eyes dimming, as if he were focused on something else. 

"You can shut up," he grumbled. "We could both have done better."

"If it lets you argue, maybe I am wrong. Perhaps it is not a demon, after all. Still, the way it drives you..."

"He's not used to having flesh. He doesn't need to care for it, but I do. I kind of like not being freezing cold or smelling like piss. I mean, sure, his last host was a corpse, and we hung out all the time, but I wasn't living in it!"

Fenris snapped his fingers. "Mage... Anders! Listen to yourself. You intentionally spent time with a possessed corpse, and you complain about the cobwebs in my house?"

"Did it ever occur to you that I might have a thing about cleanliness and sweet-smelling herbs, _because_ I used to hang out with a corpse?" Anders stuffed more bread in his mouth. "Besides, cobwebs make me gag."

" _Mages_ make me gag. You don't see me complaining."

"Au contraire. Magisters may gag you, but mages don't make you gag. I haven't seen you retch once, tonight."

"You're almost tolerable, when you're not prattling on about your oppression."

"You're remarkably pleasant, when you haven't got your hands around my neck, although, if you want to do that again I'm not sure I'd complain too much. It's kinda hot getting my neck squeezed by someone who's not trying to choke me into submission, so they can stuff me full of magebane and chain me to the wall."

"What makes you think I wouldn't?" For a moment, the idea almost sounded appealing.

"You oppose enforced submission. I'm not sure you could do it. You'd probably kill me, first." The mage's eyebrows perked in triumph, as he snagged a slice of apple.

"You're right. I probably would."

"Thank you."

Fenris just stared across the table for a few moments, but Anders didn't laugh. Didn't even open up the 'kill me now' smile.

"... What?" The word hung between them, until Anders responded.

"Thank you. It means a lot to me, that when you decide you've had enough, you'll just kill me, no bullshit. It's really not the killing me part I mind. It's the bullshit." Anders peered down at his own chest and prodded the central scar. "Justice, on the other hand, seems to take offence to me getting killed, so you might still have to work out the details with him."

"There is something terribly wrong with you, mage. Other than just being a mage."

"It's taken you this long to notice? I thought you were the observant sort!"

"In my defence, you are usually railing against the horrors of the Chantry and the oppression of all magekind. I tend to tune you out, after a while, because Hawke would be so displeased if I handed him your heart."

"'So displeased' does not even begin to describe how upset Hawke would be with that idea. Especially now." Anders shifted a little closer to the fire. "So, thank you, again."

Fenris's eyes lingered on the scar, curiously.

"Please don't. It didn't end well for the last person who stuck something in my chest," Anders sighed.

"What? No... I ..." Fenris shook his head. "I just can't figure out how you survived. It's amazing to me. I know you credit Justice, but... clean through the chest like that..."

"Clean through the chest, and then he melted the sword. I could really have done without the molten metal, but here we are." Anders shifted uncomfortably. "Shut up, you unapologetic oaf. I know why you did it, I just wish you hadn't. And we're taking the night off, because I've had _enough_. I want a hot meal and a decent conversation, and then, maybe a decent night's sleep. You'll thank me when I stop smearing pages of the manifesto with my face."

He paused and looked back at Fenris. "Sorry. I really don't need to _speak_ to him, but ... We talk to ourselves, sometimes. Hawke does it, too. You should hear the fights he picks with himself, and he doesn't even have the excuse we do."

Fenris hovered between amused and horrified, before looking back into the fire. "Sometimes, you just need to shout at someone, but it's your own fault. Not that I shout."

"I don't think I've ever heard you even raise your voice."

"I don't need to." Rubbing his nose with his thumb, Fenris looked back at the mage. "I... what I mean to say is... Nevermind."

Anders blinked.

"Does it still hurt?" Fenris gestured at the scar.

"Not really. I don't feel it much, at all. Near it, but not on it, if that makes sense."

"More sense than you tend to. I... these are different." Fenris traced one of the lines on his arm with one finger. "I feel them more, but differently. They don't hurt, and they don't feel pain, but they can be used to hurt me. I expect you knew that."

"Knew it? No. But, I expected it. Obviously, I didn't end up like you, but I know what controls look like. I'd... I'm already short enough of my clothes, here," Anders noted, gesturing toward the still-covered half of his body, "but you get the idea."

"I do. I also get the idea you don't eat enough, possibly because you keep running your mouth." Fenris lobbed the end of a loaf of bread over the table, and Anders caught it.

Halfway through the cheese-coated lump of bread, Anders let his mouth get away from him. "Can I take a closer look? I mean, if I understand how they work, maybe I can make them not work. Or, at least, not like that."

"And you?" Fenris replied, smugly condescending. "Can I come play with your scars, too?"

Anders appeared to seriously consider that, for a moment, hand travelling back to his chest, to cover that one. "Yeah. You can. No reason not to. Any scar I have, you can touch, you can ask about. All I ask is that you don't re-open them. I'm a Warden; my blood is ... not something you want to play with."

Fenris watched his face, his hands. "This isn't what you want."

"It's what you want in exchange for what I want. It's a price I'll pay, if it means I can help you get out from under that revolting bastard. You don't deserve this shit any more than I do."

"Probably less than you do."

"I make no guarantees in that department, but certainly no more than I do."

"... Mage."

"Knob-hater."

An amused sound slipped out of Fenris. "I wouldn't go that far. I'm terribly fond of my own."

"Spend a lot of time polishing it, do you?" Anders teased.

"It's shiny enough without the help."

Anders squinted in confusion. "It what? That doesn't even..." The blood drained from his face as that sank in. "Andraste's tits. You're kidding me. _There?_ "

" _All_ of me," Fenris replied, flaring into translucency, as he breathed out.

"I love it when you do that! It's amazing, and ... really kind of terrifying. I promise to do my best not to ruin _that_ for you." Traces of glowing blue danced across Anders like electric cobwebs, and Justice howled for that taste of the Fade, so close across the table.

"You must know I would sacrifice even this to be free of him. A small price for the ability to take a home and build a name."

"... You have a home. I'm sitting in it, drinking your wine," Anders joked, stiffly, eyes closed for fear of what might be seen in them.

Fenris returned to solidity, and bounced a slice of apple off the mage's forehead, when Anders didn't move fast enough to catch it. "This place is a dump."

"Hah! You admit it!" Anders picked the apple slice off his robes and stuffed it in his mouth. "Still, it's a classy dump. We could turn it into less of a dump, and then it would just be classy. And yours."

"The man who lives in a sewer is going to class up my dump? Can't wait."

"Hey, you've seen my clinic. If I can do that with a sewer, you should see what I could do with something aboveground, that doesn't have rivers of piss running through it."

"Rivers. Of piss." Fenris fixed Anders with a sharp gaze. "And you live in this place."

"Hey, if you see me looking annoyed about it, it's just be--"

"Because it's better to be pissed off than pissed on, yes."

"I've told you that one, haven't I." Anders had the decency to look embarrassed.

"No, you hadn't. But, I think I'm starting to understand how you think." The smile Fenris offered was small, but honest. "The pun was irresistible, wasn't it?"

"I love twisting a few good words, every now and then."

"Better words than the knife, I suppose." Fenris eyed a particular scar on Anders's shoulder.

"Darkspawn. Want to touch it?"

"I do. I didn't think they were intelligent enough to torture." Fenris uncoiled around the table, as Anders leaned back twisting his arm to bring the scar further into the light.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders. Death wish. Seriously. This man has no damned sense. See also 'fisting, Fenris-style', no pre-existing orifice involved. No mages were harmed in the making of this chapter, but Fenris and I may need to go re-compose our senses of reality, a bit.

Anders lay sprawled before the fire, still half-dressed, with Fenris crouched over him, fascinated, as he told stories of his time at Vigil's Keep. They'd kicked the table out of the way, an hour ago, and the pillow was now under Anders's head, instead of his ass, and the Maker only knew what had become of his hair tie.

"So, yes. They're intelligent enough to torture -- some of them, anyway. Some of them are even intelligent enough _not to_. But, the most terrifying thing I ever saw was an enlightened broodmother. Mad as a lyrium-addled Templar, not that I blame her. Have you ever seen one of those things? They're not _meant_ to consider their condition." Anders shoved his robe down a little further to show the top of a wicked rose-coloured scar that curved along the inside of his hip. "She gave me that one. Broodmothers have tentacles. Did you know they have tentacles? I didn't know that. You should know that. It's very important, if you ever end up meeting one."

"Mage. Breathe." Fenris looked amused. "I won't be held responsible, if you hyperventilate and pass out on my floor."

"Neither will I. I might be held irresponsible, though. I can be terribly irresponsible when I want to be." Anders grinned up at the elf crouched over him. "And I do love to be irresponsibly held."

"Do you?" Fenris asked, unfastening his gauntlets and tossing them aside, to finally press his bare fingers against that huge and fascinating scar he'd been avoiding. "How irresponsibly can I hold you? And which parts of you can I irresponsibly hold irresponsible?"

An inhuman sound ripped out of Anders as those slender fingers prodded at the centre of the scar, and Fenris jerked his hand back. Panting, Anders reached up and took the elf's hand in his own trembling fingers and pressed it against his chest.

"I made you a promise."

"That sounded like pain. I don't want to hurt you -- no, that's a lie. I usually want to hurt you quite a bit, but I'm not trying to hurt you right now."

"That's not pain. It's not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it's also not pain." Anders tried to ignore the way Justice clawed at the inside of his skin, trying to get closer to the lyrium lines pressed against them. "So, please, touch me like you mean it. If I need you to stop, I'll tell you, but you can't handle that one delicately. It's... kind of nauseating, and it makes my feet cold."

"If I can't be delicate, will you let me..." Fenris let his hand phase out in a blue glow.

"Yes," Anders breathed, gazing up, dumbstruck at the idea, his eyes tinged with a blue glow that threatened to dance across his cheeks.

A chill ran down Fenris's spine. He'd really never put his hand into someone's chest _consensually_ , and here was a mage -- a mage he knew and found almost tolerable, some of the time -- offering up a part of his body that had been not just violated, but nearly destroyed, for Fenris to take in a hand he'd only ever used for death. He wanted to believe Anders could stop him, that this wasn't the completely brainless act of faith it appeared to be. But, no mage had ever been able to stop him.

Slowly, Fenris pushed his fingers in, his awareness of the scar shifting as his hand passed through the tissue that passed through his hand. Again, the sounds Anders made were inhuman, as his eyes rolled back in his head, and electric blue bolts flickered across his skin. Justice. Of course. He'd opened the Fade inside the body the spirit inhabited. Fenris stopped moving, fingers still buried in Anders's chest to the second knuckle.

"Mage? Anders?" Fenris tried to keep the anxiety out of his voice. "Talk to me, Anders."

He started to pull back, but Anders's hand locked around his wrist like iron. Not that he couldn't phase his way through it, but Fenris took that as a sign to stop moving. Hawke would _kill_ him, if he damaged the mage. This mage.

"Anders, do you want me to stop?"

"Nnnnn--" The grip tightened as Anders forced his eyes to focus on Fenris. His swirling, electric-blue eyes. "More. Touch... more."

Okay, admittedly, it was probably weirder than a Genlock ballet, to have someone touching your insides. It was definitely weird to be _touching_ someone's insides -- actually feeling them, rather than just reaching in and tearing organs out. At least the mage was expressing an interest in more of the same, whatever else might be going on with the spirit and the Fade. Unless the blue eyes meant he was talking to the spirit -- but he'd heard the voice of Justice, and that wasn't it.

His hand slid in deeper, fingers curling laterally through the scar, as his thumb investigated the thick stripe along the side of the mage's heart that continued across part of a lung. He'd touched hearts and lungs, before, even if he hadn't really noticed them until he'd removed them, and that... there was no way Anders could have survived it, even as a healer. Even with a team of healers. But, the heart still beat, the lung still took air, and the mage could still complain about his cold feet. "You are a lucky man," Fenris reflected, quietly.

Below him, Anders started to shake, vibrating, fingers fluttering, teeth chattering.

"Is this acceptable? Are you well?" Fenris became still, again.

"Yes... _yes_. There -- that-- I've never -- No one -- _Yes!_ " The blue glow crackled around Anders's body, swirling at the centre of his chest, like a pool.

"Well, no, no one would have. I'm told it's something of a unique talent." All the hair on the back of Fenris's neck had stood on end, but, the mage wasn't telling him to stop. He wondered, briefly, if _Justice_ could stop him, if this got out of hand. Fade spirit, lyrium etchings... he decided Justice could likely do a lot more damage to him, in a few seconds, than Denarius ever had, and the thought was somewhat comforting.

It did not, however, address the fact that he was reaching through a living piece of the Fade and into a living, breathing man's chest. The light from Anders had crept up his arm like an Orlesian opera glove, which was a little unnerving. Still, Fenris didn't think he'd ever been so turned on, in his entire life. Actually, he'd never been turned on, except for the thing with the orichalcum potions that he still had nightmares about, and he really didn't count that. But, he held the beating heart of someone he didn't intend to kill, and the person it belonged to wasn't asking him to stop. No begging, no pleading, no weeping terror. Just fluttering fingers and maybe cold toes.

"The magic is in all of you, isn't it?" Fenris asked, eyes sliding shut as his thumb stroked Anders's heart almost fondly. "I can feel your blood, all of it, and it itches like it's part of me."

Anders made a small sound, catching the edge of his lip in his teeth.

Fenris absently forced power through the lyrium lines, to quiet the itch, like he'd done a thousand times before, in his life, and Anders arched off the floor, Fenris's knuckles connecting with the back of the scar. Anders -- no, _Justice_ \-- howled like a tempest on the open sea, and one hand would _not_ release Fenris's arm. The Fade-glow tore through the mage's body, gleaming through in cracks and slivers, radiating like a storm.

Fenris, like any sane man, panicked and froze. _Don't move. If you don't move, it won't see you._ and then _Don't move. If you damage it, Hawke will kill you. Twice._

And just as suddenly, the light went out, leaving Anders, sans terrifying blue sparkles, lying on the floor, sweat-soaked and panting at the ceiling. He licked his lips. "Maker's breath. What did you..."

"Have I harmed you?" Fenris asked, straightening his fingers. "Will you continue to be well, if I retrieve my hand?"

"I think I'm okay. I think. What just..." Anders forced himself to release Fenris's wrist. "I'm sorry, yes. Take your hand."

"I didn't think," Fenris admitted. "I tried to scratch an itch -- it's complicated, but it doesn't involve actually moving, for obvious reasons. And then Justice, I suspect."

Anders's eyes widened, and he tried to lean forward, as if to sit up, but discovered an elf in the way, and settled for holding himself up with one elbow. "Did he hurt y--"

Fenris slid his hand out, slowly, and Anders stopped in the middle of the sentence, head falling back to bare the stubble along his neck. A low, deep moan of relief poured out of the mage, and after a moment, his teeth clacked shut.

"Andraste's tits." Anders could feel the blood rushing to his face, probably leaving blotches across the top of his chest. "Fenris, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I swear I didn't know."

"What are you babbling about, mage? Your demon-spirit thing did me no harm." Fenris had little patience for mages not making sense, but that minuscule tolerance was apparently even lower while wearing armour ill-designed to contain the throbbing ache that lay along his inner thigh. It was a problem he hadn't anticipated dealing with. Ever, really. But, the beating of this mage's heart against his palm, the rush of blood against his fingertips... He didn't think anyone could have anticipated that.

"Justice... I mean, we... I didn't think he _could_!"

Anders continued to refuse to make sense, so Fenris shifted from crouching to sitting, pinning the mage down. And then the problem became obvious.

"I'm not sitting on one of those ridiculous fasteners you use for your robe, am I?" Fenris's expression was impossible to read.

"It's a little large for that. Throw off the whole aesthetic," Anders joked weakly.

"You were apologising for this."

Anders cleared his throat and stared at the wall behind him, throat bared. "More than that, but yes. I know how you feel about wizards' knobs."

"More than this...?" Fenris wasn't sure whether to be disturbed or impressed.

Anders grinned like he wanted to be punched in the teeth. He probably did. "Legendary Warden stamina."

"That's disgusting," Fenris responded, reflexively, leaning forward over Anders, until they were face-to-face. "Tell me more."

"You want me to tell you more about my knob?" Anders joked, amusement gleaming in his eyes, before he moved his arm and stretched out along the floor again.

It took a moment for Fenris to focus, as his eyes crossed in momentary horror. "No, not your knob! This legendary Warden stamina."

"This legendary Warden stamina is definitely about my knob," Anders pointed out. "And my magic. Neither of which you like."

"Tell me anyway." Fenris let his back bow, relaxing between his stiff arms, one hand on either side of the mage's head.

"You're leaning on my hair."

Fenris moved one hand, with a faintly contrite look.

"You were never wrong about me being dangerous," Anders opened, "but you were wrong about _why_. Sure, I'm a mage. Sometimes, I set things on fire. Sometimes, I set _people_ on fire. But, I'm also a Grey Warden, and that's... You can take the man out of the Wardens, but you can't take the Warden out of the man."

Anders shrugged. "You have to understand, there are things I _can't_ tell you. Literally can't."

"Does it so bind you?" Fenris had been on the wrong end of some magics like that.

"It would be dishonourable, and Justice has some really strong objections."

That actually nauseated Fenris, to some degree. "Go on."

"Suffice to say, we're tainted. We're immune to the darkspawn taint, because there's already something powerfully wrong with us. I mean, other than the fact we've signed up to march against an unending horde of vile beasts from the depths of the Abyss."

Fenris almost smiled, the corner of his mouth twitching.

"It also means Warden blood is something you don't want to get on you. It's pretty gross, really. If you ever do kill me, wash your hands. But! Somewhere in that rank Warden life-blood is the power to just ... keep going. You want to be sure a Warden will stay down, you cut their head off and pray. You know, I worked with the Hero of Ferelden, for a while. I make no guarantees even that would stop him. I'd want to grow up to be that man, if it didn't mean tripping over assassins, on the way to bed every night..."

"Wasn't the Hero of Ferelden an elf?"

"I can aspire to greatness!"

Fenris laughed, hanging his head, until Anders sputtered from the hair in his mouth.

"Tell me about Justice," Fenris prodded, eventually. "You apologised and blamed Justice, before I discovered you were talking about your knob. Have you named it after your spirit, for occasions like these?"

"There _are_ no occasions like these." Anders rubbed his face and then tapped Fenris's armour. "Take off the plate, and I'll tell you. You've poked and prodded at the scars on my chest, and I don't even know what yours look like."

"You kept your promise." Fenris nodded and sat up, unfastening buckles as he moved. He paused, as his ass settled onto Anders again. "Still?"

Anders just coughed and rubbed his face again. "Legendary," he complained.

Fenris's armour clattered to the ground beside him, and he tossed the gauntlets into the plate, not to lose them. "Why do I have no doubt in my mind that you've thoroughly tested the limits?"

"Because I'm handsome, young, and lusty, and you just know me that well?"

"I debate 'young'."

"But, not 'handsome'? Maker, I must've made some good choices, somewhere." Anders grinned. "And, I am young! Not a grey hair on me!"

"Mmm. Which is why you were polishing knobs twenty-odd years ago, is it?"

"Hah!" Anders choked on a laugh. "I did not actually say that. On the other hand, it might be... Nope! Eighteen years of spit-polished good times."

"Because that makes you _so much younger_ ," Fenris teased.

"On the other hand, I'm a Warden, so I'm probably already middle-aged. We don't live so long."

"You sit around writing manifestos and shouting at young Templars. You're definitely middle-aged." Fenris cocked his head, knowingly. "If that spirit let you eat, you'd be some pudgy revolutionary scholar."

"I would not! You take that back!" Anders jabbed a finger at the elf, landing a sharp poke at the intersection of several lines.

Fenris sucked in a sharp breath. "Careful."

"I thought you said they didn't hurt." Anders pulled his hand back quickly.

"They don't. You're magic." Fenris rubbed absently at the spot.

"Wait, _my_ magic or _I'm_ magic."

"The latter. Possibly both." Fenris shifted his weight. "Weren't you going to explain something about Justice and your knob?"

"The knob you're currently sitting on. Yes, I was." Anders ran a hand through his hair and tried to figure out where to start. "I don't remember about half of that. Justice... he likes lyrium. Says he can hear it sing. It reminds him of home. So, when you put your hands on me, he goes a little nuts."

"And when I put my hand _in_ you..."

"I'm the first body he's been in that _worked_. He's usually trying not to pay attention when I do things like that. Well, no, not _like that_ , there's nothing like _that_ , you know what I mean."

"And you? Did you enjoy it, as well?"

"... Next question."

With a frustrated sound, Fenris grabbed the mage's hand and pressed it against the tight-stretched inner thigh of his leggings. "I put my hand inside you, because you let me. I felt the beat of your heart and the rush of your blood. I could have killed you, and you told me you wanted more."

He let go of Anders's hand, waiting to see if the mage would pull away, but Anders just lazily stretched his fingers along the length. "Did you enjoy it, or was I talking to Justice?"

"It's _my_ knob you're sitting on. What do you think?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris is talking himself around an idea. Anders knows exactly what's going on, and is willing to let it happen.
> 
> A lot of this chapter is happening on more than one level. There are some jumps that may not quite make sense, if you're not reading between the lines, but I wrote it like that for a reason.

"What do I think? I think I should be completely revolted. I think I thought I'd never have a mage's hands on me again."

Anders tried to pull his hand back, but Fenris grabbed it.

"I think I want to put my hands in you and listen to you yowl like a cat in heat, all night. I think I want you to put your hands on me and burn him out of me. I think I want all of this. I think I want none of this. And I think your knob makes a very comfortable cushion for my bony ass."

Anders managed a pained smile. "Can you... just a little to the left? My left. I think you're right about having a bony ass."

Fenris shifted his weight.

"Thanks." Anders ran his palm along Fenris's thigh -- _just_ his thigh. "I think you're mostly sitting on my sleeve, though, which is probably why that's so cozy."

"You might be right. Maker forbid I take comfort in your flesh. Your hands on my skin... it's sickening. Every time. Even if I didn't find you intrinsically grotesque and horrifying, he made sure I'd never belong to anyone else." The lines lit, starting at the tips of Fenris's fingers and slowly curling inward, across his shoulders, down his chest.

"I don't want to own you. I want to give you back your life. It's what we all want for you."

"There is no 'give back'. I never had it in the first place."

"Then I just want to tear out that magister's tongue and choke the life out of him with it, so you can live your life as you choose, without looking over your shoulder constantly," Anders insisted.

Fenris squirmed. "Stop that, or I might start to find you appealing, you wretched abomination. Just the image of you, without your magic, and with such an interesting choice of garotte..."

"Borrowed that from an Antivan acquaintance. It's a good one, isn't it?" Anders tentatively reached for Fenris's hand. "Will you let me try to burn him out of you?"

"Provided you don't mean that literally, I may be convinced to permit it." Fenris laid his hand in Anders's. "But, keep in mind this is no half-impotent Circle mage, studying magic from the safe books."

"I read Tevene. What, exactly, do you think I was studying, fashion design? No, I was reading the history of the Imperium. I'm pretty clear on the difference between 'mage' and 'magister'." Anders ran a finger along one of the lyrium lines on the back of Fenris's hand. "How do I make sure you don't throw up on me? Would healing help?"

"No. No healing." Fenris paled and grabbed Anders's hand, pressing a single finger against a conjunction of lines on his chest. "Start here, and ... something electric? I think it might disrupt what's there."

He didn't mention how soothing he found the mage's lightning storms, in combat; how much easier it was to concentrate, to anticipate, with the air sharp with ozone and the gentle touch of electricity on his skin. It was just another thing that bothered him about Anders.

"Like this?" Anders asked, just the faintest sparks dancing between his fingers, as he pressed one to Fenris's chest.

An easy sigh passed Fenris's lips. "Just like that. Just follow the..." He gestured vaguely and one line took on a faint glow, winding up across his shoulder and down his arm, as Anders followed it with one crackling finger.

It felt _good_. The kind of good he wanted to feel through his whole body, a sharp, tart pleasure that lanced across aches he'd forgotten he had, soothing them with a crackling hum. Fenris panted, arms shaking as he leaned over the mage, licking his lips as he tried to form words.

"Take your hands off me."

Anders wasn't sure he'd ever moved so fast in his life, knocking an elbow against the floor as he jerked back.

Fenris was sure Anders was talking, but there was nothing beyond the rushing in his ears. Magic under his skin, again. Magic that wasn't the incidental side-effect of battle, but made for him. Hands on his skin, pushing it into him.

He'd asked for it. Literally opened his mouth and spoke the words. But, that didn't matter as much as he thought it would. He could still smell the mage under him, feel the hum of the abomination's existence ringing through him. 

But, Anders made no move to touch him, just laid on the floor, wide gold eyes tinged with concern. For a long while, all Fenris could see was those rings of gold. Golden rings, golden fountains, the engraved rims of golden goblets, golden serpents swallowing their tails.

"Broody? Not looking so good..." The mage's voice filtered back into his perception.

Fenris sat up and back, catching Anders's knee with his ribs, and sliding back to his perch across the mage's hips. "That's not my name," he grumbled, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Exactly. It's a matter of time and place. You weren't here, and I didn't want you mistaking me for someone else."

Fenris's eyes focused sharply on the mage. "I couldn't possibly take you for other than you are."

"I feel like I should be offended by that, but I really can't raise the shit to give, under the circumstances." Anders slowly pushed his own hair back, somewhat pointless since he was laying on the floor. "What did I do? So I don't do it again..."

"You won't. Just don't touch me." Fenris stretched up with one arm and grabbed a bottle of wine from atop the mantel. 

"Do you just always have a bottle in reach?" Anders managed to look almost amused.

"If I can help it." Fenris took a long swallow and squinted at Anders. "Don't look at me like that, abomination."

"Oooh. We're back to 'abomination'." Anders rolled his eyes. "Look at you like what, like I'm checking for damage? Or like I'm lying under an extremely attractive man who loathes my very essence? Or like I'm wondering if you're going to reach into my chest for less pleasant reasons, because speaking of lying, I'd be lying if I said that hadn't crossed my mind?"

"When I kill you, it will be as a man, not a monster," Fenris muttered into his wine.

Anders looked like he might dispute the last, but choked it back. "Is that just so you don't have to clean up the puddle on the floor, when you're done?"

A smile touched the corner of Fenris's mouth, behind the bottle. "Among other things."

They watched each other, for a few moments. Fenris perched askance across Anders's hips, leaning back against the mage's raised knee, drinking wine. Anders sprawled on the floor like he owned the place, one knee propping up Fenris, a hand on his own belly and the other by his head, fingers twisted in the ends of his hair.

Fenris shifted one leg, pulling it up so he could reach the tip of the scar that curved into Anders's hip. "Tell me about this one. How far down does that go?"

"Wrong question. That's how far _up_ it comes. Tentacles. I told you." Anders sighed and pointed with the hand that had been on his belly. "The other end is on my ankle."

"Tentacle _what_? That looks like a slice." Fenris distracted himself with the simple subjects. He knew how to read scars, and he knew the mage would talk, if prodded.

"It is a slice. You want the rest? You're leaning on it." Anders tugged at his robe along the leg behind Fenris.

"Showing me your legs, now?" Fenris teased, leaning forward as Anders hiked up his robe.

"You're already sitting on my knob. Might as well get the full Anders experience."

"That's disgusting," Fenris muttered, reflexively, twisting around to get a better look.

"You want disgusting, that's the scar for it. Razor sharp, but not all of them were, so I got lazy. Too busy trying to kill her to watch behind me. Felt it grab my leg, and then everything gets fuzzy." A breathy laugh slipped out of Anders. "The condition of my robe told the rest of the story. You know intestinal ruptures!"

"I... have had some experience in that regard. And then I learnt to reach higher, because that's not nearly as satisfying as it feels like it should be." Fenris shuddered a touch, as punctuation.

"You mean you..."

The exasperated look in those big, green eyes said it all.

"You poor bastard," Anders laughed.

Fenris took a drink and avoided looking the mage in the eye. "Shut up. It sounded like a good idea. I was young."

"Anyway, not the first or the last time I had my organs violated." Anders stretched his other leg, shifting slightly under Fenris. "You'd think I'd stop letting that happen."

"I'd think you'd stop getting up from it, but your demon..."

"Justice wasn't with me, then. I was saved by old Tevinter magic. Like dragon-worshipping, Old Gods, thousand-year-old Tevinter magic, from before the First Blight, that was also _raining fire from the sky_ in a much more convincing way than I ever managed." What followed was less a grin than a grimace.

"Fortune favours you," Fenris observed.

"Oh, yeah, I'm destined for something. Like an entry in Ferelden's Famous, for most organ violations in a lifetime."

"Or maybe your idiot crusade will actually succeed," Fenris suggested. "I'd have to kill you, of course."

"Might have some competition, there."

"No serious competition. You'll fall to me, because I don't want to wring repentance from you, first. There is no sufficient repentance for what you are," Fenris reasoned.

"Maker's breath," Anders sighed, holding out a hand. "If you're going to get like that, at least hand me the wine, first."

"You drink a lot for someone who claims not to drink," Fenris remarked, smacking the bottle into Anders's palm.

"What can I say? You've temporarily freed me from my bright-blue inhibitions." Anders hiked himself up on one elbow and took a swig. "Thanks, by the way, I'd almost forgotten what it was like to be just a man."

"Is it sufficient payment for the way I have handled your scars? We made a deal. I am afraid I may not be able to keep my end." Fenris snatched the bottle back, as soon as it left Anders's lips.

"Sufficient payment for the way you handled my scars is currently soaking into my robe." Anders stared into the fire and rubbed the corner of his eye with one thumb.

"I would have thought your smalls sufficient, or is that another Warden thing?"

"You would have thought I was _wearing_ smalls," Anders pointed out. "I got out of the habit, when I was still in the Tower. There's just no point to them, with robes, and it's just another layer, when you're trying to get away with impolite things in polite company."

"Mages. Do you ever think of anything but fucking and killing?"

"Because drinking and killing is such a step up?"

"I _do_ have other interests."

"As do I. But, lying here with a puddle of my own fluids soaking into my robe and _you_ on top of me, fucking and _getting killed_ are in the forefront of my mind," Anders admitted.

Fenris scoffed and leaned back, without thinking, resting his bare back against Anders's bare thigh. Surprise and mild discomfort flashed across his face. "I can feel it, you know. The magic rides your skin. I touch you and the lyrium in me hums."

"If you're going to keep leaning on me, you can pull my robe back down."

"Do you want me to?" Fenris asked.

"I don't actually care, but you looked a little uncomfortable. My discomfort has already passed its peak, maybe somewhere around where you put my hand on your throbbing knob, and told me my touch was sickening."

"I thought I wanted you to touch me. I was wrong." Fenris finished the wine and tossed the bottle across the room, with no real force behind it. He reached back and dragged his fingers along the scar that wound around Anders's leg. "Do you mind?"

Anders took it for the peace offering it was, but not without commentary. "You stuck your hand in my chest and squeezed my heart until I came all over myself. I think I can handle you groping my leg."

Fenris had the decency to look faintly abashed. "Entirely unintentional."

"Just to keep your intentions up to date with your actions, if you keep rubbing next to this scar, that's going to happen again. It's twisted the nerves along my inner thigh in some fun ways." Anders shrugged, tipping his head to the side, to rest on his shoulder.

"Do you want me to stop?" Fenris asked, thumb paused in a particularly delicate place.

"If you can handle it, I can handle it." Anders didn't sound entirely sure of that, but no more than a slight tension disrupted the line of his repose. "Touching me doesn't sicken you?"

"It's different," Fenris tried to explain, fingers nervously kneading the scar. "I know where you are. I know what part of me will touch you, where, and how. I can change the texture of the touch, if it's not right. I can take my hands off you, if it's too much."

The 'and you let me' remained unspoken.

"So, you just need to be in control. I can work with that." Anders shrugged again and flexed his thigh against Fenris's hand.

"You defeated this creature." Fenris changed the subject, turning to get a better look at the scar under his hand, running his fascinated fingers along the curves. "This thing that almost took your leg, almost took your life."

"The Hero of Ferelden defeated her, I think. I'm missing some time. Went down, got back up, it was still raining fire. I'm pretty sure I just kept throwing lightning until Nate slapped the sense back into me." A tremor ran through his body, at the memory. "Blood loss didn't do me any favours."

"I find blood loss does a great favour to many mages," Fenris offered, with a rumble of amusement in his chest.

"By virtue of making them dead?"

"You know me so well." Fenris phased his fingers out and dug them in, taking the depth of the scar.

Anders gasped and swallowed, his eyes drifting shut.

"Where did it open you?" Fenris asked, moving his hand so the scar trailed through his fingers like a rope. "May I see?"

"I'd have to be naked. You sure you want that? A naked mage with a throbbing knob, entirely at your disposal?" The words came out strained and breathy.

"With the understanding that if you get anything on me, you will clean it off." Fenris tugged at the scar a little, and Anders nearly bit through his lip. "With your tongue."

"You know that would involve me touching you, right?"

"It might be worth the trouble, just to see you try."

" _You_ have a kink." Anders shifted, trying to wriggle out of his robe. "You're also going to need to move, if you want me to take this off."

Fenris slid his fingers out of that warm flesh, almost regretfully, and stood, stepping back. He stared into the fire, instead of watching the mage stripping off at his feet.

"It's not control," he started, then stopped. A moment later, he tried again. "It is control, but not force. I would not _take_ this from you, but when you throw it at my feet, it would take a stronger man than I to turn it down."

"Hardly throwing myself at your feet," Anders muttered, throwing his robe across the room and missing the bed. "You wanted to show me I was wrong. Instead, you showed me I was a totally other kind of wrong. But, we're exactly where we started: I satisfy your curiosity and you satisfy mine. We've just moved on to different stakes."

"Even when I have been free to touch, I have rarely been invited. And even when invited, never quite like this." Fenris crouched as Anders tugged his own boots off. "I have never wanted to accept the invitation. I didn't want to accept this one. But, you just keep giving, and I can't stop taking."

"I'm pretty comfortable giving my body. You're not even the first person who's wanted to kill me, and got me naked anyway." Anders tossed the boots in the direction of the table and stretched out on his side, back to the fire. The scar widened considerably with the curve of his hip and slimmed down again as it tucked between his legs.

"I shouldn't be doing this," Fenris protested, standing and stepping back, even as his eyes lingered.

"It's different. I'm not doing it to save my life. You've got worth, as a man, and so do I." Anders ran a hand through his hair. "We're just two crusaders with different battles getting a little kinky over war stories. You want me to put my clothes on and leave, just say the word."

'Just say the word.' Again, the mage had put control into his hands. This mage, Anders, had bribed his way in with food, and then surrendered to him, flesh and dignity. This mage, Anders, who had covered his back and healed his wounds a hundred times, with no thanks. This mage, Anders, with his idiotic crusade for mage rights, that would only end in chains and death.

He wanted to say the word. Thought he would. But, instead, Fenris knelt again, tracing fingers along the twisted, misformed skin between the thick line of the scar and the sunken outer curve of where the muscle had retracted, when cut. Fixed now, but the path still showed so clearly, pocked and bare of the light dusting of golden hair that covered the surrounding skin.

Anders rolled onto his back, bending that leg again and angling his hips to show where the ropy scar passed under him, following the bottom curve of his ass-cheek to join with the spiral that wound up his leg.

"Stay. Please." Those weren't the words Fenris intended to say, but they were the words he meant.

Anders relaxed. "See anything else you're curious about, or should I roll over, so you can manhandle my back?"

Fenris squinted, assessing the new expanse of flesh. His eyebrows arced up when he encountered a line in an unusual location. He pointed, instead of touching. "This one." 

"Andraste's ass. Does that actually still show?" Anders sighed and showed the back of his hand. "Templar. It's the other half of this one. Someone took an objection to me amusing myself in solitary."

"Lash?" Fenris's face twisted in understanding.

"Yeah. Just the one." Anders tucked his fist under his head, so he could squint down his chest at Fenris.

"Didn't you heal--"

"Magebane." An unnatural calm settled along Anders's limbs, followed by ghostly traces of blue light. "It got a little nasty before anyone thought to fix it. Templars joked they were just going to let it rot off, that maybe I'd quit going over the wall, if I didn't have anything to offer the village girls. Shows what they knew. I didn't have to leave the tower for that, and I knew some _extremely_ imaginative girls. Fortunately, it didn't come to that, and the bobbing knob of the Anderfels survived to plunder more willing flesh."

Whatever response might have followed that caught in Fenris's throat.

"And if you want to play with that one, I'm definitely going to have to lick something off you."

"I'm not in the habit of playing with wizards' knobs." Fenris seized the opportunity to extract himself from his memories. After everything he'd done, and everything done to him, he'd _never_ been left to fester. He was worth too much in perfect working condition.

"You're getting into the habit of playing with my scars. I figured it was worth a warning."

"Aside from the obvious, which of your scars would most likely leave you licking me clean, do you think?" Fenris studiously examined the long lines, natural and unnatural, of the mage's lean body.

"The one that got me naked, of course. From about mid-thigh to where it curves up and starts to spread out. Maybe this one on my shoulder. That one goes all the way through and has some interesting memories attached. And I'm sure there's a few more, but they're nowhere you can see them." Anders grinned and rubbed at the stubble on is cheek. "Trying to avoid making a mess of me, again?"

"On the contrary. I want to watch you writhe and lose control of your body at my touch." The slim smile offered was almost a challenge. "Will you give me that?"

"Take it." Anders spread his legs a little further and pulled the pillow back under his head. "If you can wring it out of my scars, it's yours."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wow. Smutty smut. The smuttiest smut, perhaps. Erotic asphyxiation, legendary warden stamina, and Anders mouthing off at the best times.

It started slow. Fenris wanted to watch _Anders_ come apart for him, not the demon-spirit thing, so he kept his hands outside the mage's skin, to start, tracing that long dusky coil from Anders's ankle all the way up. Somewhere just past the knee, the mage started to sweat, a smell like ozone and elfroot. Fenris looked up along the pale length of the mage's warm body to find that Anders had his palm pressed against his forehead, eyes squeezed shut. This was not what he was looking for, even if it was technically what Anders had offered.

His fingers traced the scar further up, moving more quickly, until he reached the place Anders had warned him about, earlier, stroking and kneading it with his thumb. Fenris could feel Anders's body relax against his hand. A soft sigh followed by a warm groan spilled from Anders, as Fenris continued to caress his inner thigh.

Anders wanted to say something, to give some direction, some hints about his own flesh, but for all that this was about turning him into a fucksore pile of goo, it wasn't actually about what he wanted. If Fenris wanted to know, he'd ask. And he would, too. Anders had no doubt of that.

Feeling his body warm to Fenris's hands, Anders began the slow, rolling flex of muscle in his other thigh -- the one that under other circumstances, he'd used to bring himself off under countless tables during meetings he probably should have been paying attention to. But, that would have required him to be in a very different position. As it stood, it was simply another sign of his desire.

"From this alone?" Fenris asked, timing the motion of his hand to the flex of the other thigh.

"Probably not. Not like that," Anders admitted.

"Show me."

"Give me your other hand."

Fenris looked longingly at his gauntlets, for a moment, before offering the hand to Anders. "Show me _quickly_."

Covering Fenris's hand with his own, Anders stroked his thigh with Fenris's fingers, dragging a nail along the edge of the scar, demonstrating where to pinch, how hard to twist, how to press mercilessly on that one spot that made his back arch and his hips roll. And just as quickly as it began, Anders withdrew his hand.

"Like that," he breathed.

"Like this?" Fenris's fingers danced across the mage's skin, and Anders bucked and twisted.

"Yes! Yes, Fenris, yes _please_." Anders's eyes squeezed shut and his legs tensed.

"So easy to push you so far," Fenris teased, with a sharp pinch beside where the scar joined the curve of Anders's hip.

Anders gasped, gulped, and took a heaving breath -- an almost silent series of sounds that faded into the crackling of the fire. "I showed you how to cheat," he breathed, "how I'd put my hands on myself. Do you want me to make this more difficult for you? I can lie here and think about the Knight-Commander."

"No, no. I like you easy. I like that all I have to do is press and pinch, and I can feel the blood race through you, watch your pulse as you dribble across your belly." Fenris punctuated the thought with a solid flick to a point the skin seemed thinnest.

Anders arched, chest canting up to press the back of his head deeper into the pillow, as he choked off a strained sound into a huff of breath. Another strike to the same spot, and his hands clenched, rhythmically squeezing nothing. Fenris dug his thumb in beside the scar, where it curved beneath the joint, just below where it rose up into the bowl of Anders's hip.

A sharp breath shot out of Anders -- just "Ah!", and his teeth clenched shut, as his entire body fell loose, below the neck. The first spurt hit his neck and chin, dripping down into his hair, and he breathed slowly and deeply, just letting it wash over him as he painted his chest white.

Panting, a lazy smile spreading across his face, Anders wiped his chin and licked his fingers clean. "Too many years since I left the tower. I'm getting loud."

" _That_ was loud?" Fenris let his hands wander over a few other scars.

"Loud enough to get caught. I used to yawn louder than I came." Anders's hand twitched toward his still-interested cock, but stopped, hand tense, and dragged his nails up his palm, instead.

"Earlier... your whole body was tight. If I didn't know I could pass through it, I'd have thought you were going to break my wrist. And squalling to break my windows, too." Fenris traced just outside the edge of a spatter.

"Earlier, you had the interest of my less-delightful half. Do you want me to clamp down and scream for you? I might be able to do it." Anders rubbed his lower lip against a tooth, as Fenris considered the offer.

"No. This is what you are, and I would know you, not what you think I want you to be." Fenris traced the line of another scar, passing his finger through it, letting it pass through him. "Soft and quiet, in the height of pleasure. Not what Varric's books or my own observations would lead me to believe."

"Is that your way of saying I'm obnoxious?" Anders squinted at the elf fondling his scars.

"No. But, you are obnoxious." Fenris plunged a finger into what looked like an arrow path through Anders's shoulder.

Anders hissed and tipped his head back. "Templar. Saw it coming and just kept going."

"You really are crazed. You know that, don't you?"

"Every second, every day." Anders licked his lips. "You sounded like you were going to ask something else."

"In Varric's books," he wouldn't talk about his own experiences, "there is a great deal of thrashing and squealing, clenching and howling, much like your ... 'less-delightful half'. You are very different."

"That's not a question, but I'll answer it. If you don't shriek, you don't get caught. If you don't tense up, you don't get hurt. Or caught."

"Hurt?" Fenris lifted an eyebrow, inquisitively, fingers stilled.

"No. If you want me to do that again, I'm not talking about it. Ply me with Antivan brandy and ask me another night." Anders rubbed his knuckles against the stubble on his cheek.

"Drunkard," Fenris teased.

Anders stared until Fenris met his eyes. "Yes."

Fenris twisted his hand until a slow, white dribble ran into the curve of Anders's shoulder, to meet his fingers. Sliding his fingers slowly out of the deep corridor of scar tissue, he swept up the gobbet of spunk.

"You got some on me."

"Did I?" Anders opened his mouth, eyes never leaving Fenris's.

Cold sweat trickled down Fenris's spine as Anders sucked and licked his fingers, an almost inaudible hum of contentment resonating along that talented tongue and buzzing through his knuckles. There had been no challenge, no argument, no sense that this was some punishment to be avoided. The mage had just opened his mouth and taken it, and Fenris dimly wondered how far that would go, how far he could push, before Anders drew the line.

His other hand settled gently around Anders's throat, for a moment, prompting the mage to make an encouraging sound and tilt his head back. Fenris settled for scratching the stubble along the line of his jaw, enjoying the sound and the sensation against his fingertips. Eventually, he pulled his now-damp fingers free, of those tempting lips, plunging them straight back into that deep, round scar.

Tension rippled through Anders, there and then gone, and a hitched breath seemed to be the extent of his opinion on the subject.

"Is that all?"

Anders pulled his shoulder up, trembling with the sensation of pulling Fenris's fingers deeper into him. "You want the back, for that one."

Fenris pulled his fingers out again, eyeing Anders expectantly.

"If I roll over and drip on the floor, it becomes _your_ problem. Your floor is not fit for licking." Anders squinted pointedly at Fenris, as he sat up.

"I would take no pleasure in you licking my floor, whatever I might think of you." Fenris ran Anders's last sentence through his head again. "Is there a floor that _is_ fit for licking?"

"Ask Isabela about Val Royeaux. I guarantee she'll start with the story you want to hear." Anders rolled over, to his elbows and knees, resting his head on his forearms. "I wasn't there. I'm _glad_ I wasn't there. But, if I were ever going to lick a floor of my own free will, it would be that one."

Fenris didn't ask after the implication, this time, but ran his hands down Anders's back. Here were the patterns he recognised, along with the usual assortment of gashes and burns, and that long melted-looking blotch that had surely obliterated several other scars. He pinched a strange-shaped scar on the curve of the mage's ass.

"Fell off a cliff and broke my hip. Luke's fault," Anders muttered.

"Luke?" Fenris inquired, letting his hands wander over the ragged map of scars.

"Warden-Commander Lucien Surana, the Hero of Ferelden. Nice guy, but no sense of his surroundings, sometimes. Went after a revenant, and hip-checked me off the bluff. Ended up swarmed by freshly-hatched darkspawn. Nothing a little lightning and a whole lot of healing couldn't get me out of."

"I take back everything I have ever said about your fine fortune."

Anders wiggled his ass. "Weren't you going to grope me? Or am I kneeling here, dripping on your floor for nothing?"

Fenris dug two fingers into the scar on the mage's shoulder, fully physical, feeling the change in density between the raised scar and the flesh beneath.

Anders twisted his hips and stretched one arm along the floor, putting himself even more deliciously on display. "Harder," he gasped, against his better judgement.

Finding himself all too happy to comply, Fenris jammed his fingers against the scar, letting his nails bite into the skin. Something shifted under the surface, and the scar sunk in as he pressed. It felt like some part of the muscle underneath had never mended. And the mage seemed to love it, panting, gasping, and hissing, chest pressed down, ass straining upward.

Fenris watched the short stripe along the floor grow thicker, as Anders dripped in anticipation. Mimicking some half-remembered motion, Fenris cupped his other hand against the mage's lower back, and pressed the heel of his palm against Anders's tailbone.

A heaving breath shook Anders, shock giving way, almost instantly, to pleasure. He rolled his shoulder and ground his ass against the welcome pressure.

Discarding what little remained of his good judgement, Fenris twisted, squeezing Anders's ass at a slightly different angle, in order to bring his face closer to his other hand. Turning his fingers, just a little, he bared some of the scar, without easing the pressure, and dragged his tongue across the ridge of flesh at the edge.

Anders's eyes snapped open, already rolled back in his head, and words died on his tongue, over and over, in a breathy stream of garbage syllables. As Fenris's teeth sunk into his back, tongue darting around the insistent pressure of those deadly fingertips, Anders sighed, lazily shifting his weight back against Fenris's other palm as he emptied himself onto the floor.

"Mage?" Fenris muttered against the wet skin under his lips.

The only response was a low, rumbling moan and a giddy-looking smile.

Fenris eased up, kneading the scar, as he stopped trying to drive his fingers through the flesh without phasing out. His tongue lingered, and the taste of the mage laid heavy in his mouth. 

Anders finally managed a response. "That's three. I can go another round, but if you want me to stay in this position, you're going to have to hold me up."

"Maybe not so legendary, after all," Fenris teased, with a last nip to the scar.

"You want to say that again after three orgasms, half a bottle of wine, and your first meal in two days?" Anders complained, stretching in a distinctly feline fashion. "I'm still good for another one, if you want it. Maybe two, but I wouldn't put more than two sovereigns on the second one."

"Anders?"

He squinted up over his shoulder, inquisitively.

"I want it." Fenris looked surprised by the words, and tried them again, feeling the weight of them on his tongue and the taste of the mage that lingered in his mouth. "I _want_ it. I want to wring it out of you. You..."

Fenris ran out of words, without running out of sentiments to express, and his hands slid across Anders's skin, clutching and kneading as if to wring the missing words out of him.

Anders eased himself onto his side, without moving away from those questing hands. A wry smile crept across his face. "I know; I'm beautiful."

"Insufferable mage," Fenris huffed, flicking Anders in the other shoulder.

"You seem to be suffering me gladly, tonight." Anders picked a few flakes of drying spunk out of his hair. "Any thoughts on how you want the next one?"

"You..." Fenris looked away, checking the room for a bottle he hadn't already emptied down his throat. "You said something earlier, tonight. How it might be ... 'hot' if I grabbed you by the neck. Was that just your mouth getting ahead of you?"

"You want to choke me for it?" Anders didn't look disgusted.

"Yes. If--" Fenris gesticulated loosely with one hand.

"If I'll let you. Which I might." Anders ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. "Two rules. One, I need you to tell me that you know what you're doing, at least enough that you're not going to slip and kill me. You kill me, you get to tell Hawke."

"I know how not to kill you." Looking back, Fenris caught Anders's eyes, and Anders knew better than to question the surety in that assertion. "What's the second one?"

"This is the one where you tell me to get dressed and go home," Anders predicted. "If you want to wring my neck, I need you to bang me like a cheap cellar door. If you just want to throttle me a little, that's fine, too, but that's not going to be number four."

"You expect me to--"

"I don't expect anything from you. I'm telling you how to get what I think you want, in the way you said you want it. You want to squeeze my neck until I shoot out all over myself, I'm going to need you to bang my ass so hard I can feel it in my throat." Anders pulled at his own hair, checking it for crunchy spots. "Don't worry about hurting me. You _will_ hurt me, if you do this, and that's kind of the point. If that isn't what you want, pick something else."

"How many people have done this with you?" Fenris asked, curiously.

"With? One. Repeatedly. Great weekend." Anders smiled warmly at the memory.

The 'to' was implied, Fenris gathered. "On the bed?" he offered.

"No." Anders pulled the pillow out from behind him. "You should probably kneel on something. Don't worry about me, unless I stop breathing."

Fenris looked uncertain, hands reachng out and then not touching Anders. "How...?"

Anders rolled onto his back, again, pulling his knees to his chest. Sweat broke out on the backs of his thighs, and he swallowed. "Please don't kill me, Fenris."

"This once, I don't want to. You'll live." Fenris picked at the lacings on the last of his clothing, as if untying this last barrier was grounding him. Standing, he pulled off the leggings, light travelling the lines in his skin as he took a few breaths.

"Giving me a rough time about my smalls, when you don't wear them, either," Anders teased. "Typical."

"You have seen how my clothing fits. Did you honestly expect I did?" Fenris knelt between the mage's raised ankles and ran a hand down Anders's chest.

"Oh. Here, you'll want this." Holding out his hand, Anders cast a small grease spell.

Fenris dipped his fingers in it and looked like he might pass out. "I don't know..." he finally admitted. "I don't know how."

Anders shifted position and sat up, careful not to spill the grease. "Give me your hand."

Fenris put his hand out and Anders spilled the grease into it, without touching him.

"Come on, you know Varric's books. You know how this works."

"Did you actually just ask me to do something _Varric_ wrote? I prefer to keep his fictions a decent distance from my reality."

"He's a little overboard with the adjectives, but the mechanics are relatively realistic. First apply grease, then apply knob."

"'Melchior slipped his slick fingers into her juicy crevice, lapping the honey from her swollen bob'?" Fenris recited, deadpan.

Anders choked. "You can _quote_ them?"

"Obviously."

"Well, _licking my ass_ isn't really necessary, but if you want to, I'm not going to turn it down." Anders cackled nervously, palm pressed into his eyesocket.

"Getting hysterical on me?" Fenris asked, stroking the grease onto himself, first, tracing the lines of lyrium with his thumb.

"Maybe a little." Anders laid back down and took a few breaths, before he felt Fenris's fingers opening him up.

"You want me to fit that in here."

"That's the idea. People do it all the time. I should know, I'm one of them!" Anders struggled not to touch anything regrettable with his greasy hand.

"I will buy Varric a pint of the good ale, if this works," Fenris muttered under his breath, pulling his fingers out, as he laid his cock against Anders's ass. He pushed gently, and Anders relaxed.

"Push, Broody, it'll fit," Anders encouraged.

"If I break anything, I want it perfectly clear it was your fault," Fenris growled, shoving forward and burying the head in Anders, who made a low, warm sound.

"Just like that. You can fit it all."

Fenris made a strange sound and stopped moving, bracing himself with one hand on Anders's knee. "Mage, if I ... If I become someone else, don't let me kill you."

Anders squeezed the hand on his knee, briefly. "Flashbacks club," he joked. "You don't let me surrender to death if I white out, and I won't let you kill me if you white out."

"Deal." A flash of resigned disgust bloomed on Fenris's face. "You just wiped grease on me."

"... Shit."

"Please don't."

Anders whooped with laughter, until he managed to choke it down to a persistent cackle. "Shut up and fuck me, Broody."

"You want it, mage?" Fenris growled, leaning forward, as he tucked his shoulders under Anders's knees. "You want me to cram all of this into that tiny, tight hole?"

Anders nodded, gleefully. "That's exactly what I--"

The words cut off in a surprised yelp as Fenris did exactly that, all at once, and then froze, crouched over Anders and shivering. Anders flexed encouragingly, a few times.

"I can feel you squeezing me." Wonder and delight radiated from Fenris. "You're so hot and soft, inside."

"If I knew all it would take to make you smile like that was my ass, I'd have started trying sooner."

"Stop that. You sound like Hawke."

Anders smiled that dangerous smile again. "Make me."

Fenris took stock of the entire situation and all its angles in a split second, lunging forward in a way that nearly folded Anders in half and wrapping a hand around his throat.

"Move your hips," Anders choked out, eyes gleaming.

"Bossy, commanding, _mage_ ," Fenris snarled, delivering each word with a thrust of his hips. Thrusting... He decided he liked thrusting. Below him, Anders nodded encouragement, and he picked up the pace, driving himself faster, harder, deeper into the mage.

Anders scrabbled at the floor, trying to keep himself in place, as Fenris found a rhythm, hammering mercilessly into his body. The hand around his neck was just tight enough that each breath came in slow and raw, but there was no danger that he wouldn't get it. 

This was easy. Anders relaxed into it, holding on to Fenris's back with his heels. Slow, long breaths, stuttered by the impact of another body against his own. That lean body arched over him, glowing faintly along the lines of lyrium -- the lyrium he could feel inside him, a delicious ache, as it slid over his insides, never in one place long enough to settle. He tapped one of Fenris's fingers and gestured to suggest a tighter grip.

Sweat dripped from Fenris's brow and shoulders, and low sounds of delight bubbled up from his chest. "This... I can't..."

Anders's eyes rolled back in his head, and he gestured for Fenris to please himself. But, he couldn't stay lost for long.

Fenris snapped his fingers. "Mage... Mage!"

As Anders tried to focus, Fenris phased out his free hand and gestured questioningly at Anders's chest. Anders nodded so hard he thought his head might roll off.

And then Fenris was inside him again, stroking his pounding heart. Stroking his heart, hammering his ass, and squeezing his neck...

"Your life... in my hands..." Fenris panted. "Don't... let me kill you."

The magic danced across the lyrium in Fenris's skin in ways he'd never before felt, the heat of it welcome, instead of distracting. This mage, under him, wrapped around him, inviting his most intimate and deadly touch... Wilfully submitting to his whims...

It was too much. Fenris's hands gripped tighter, as his hips bucked and rolled, forcing him in as deep as he could be, when the pleasure obliterated his awareness of everything else. He was dimly conscious of the way he throbbed and spurted as the mage clamped down around him, hot and tight. The mage...

Anders could go a bit without breathing. He'd never been entirely clear on whether that was a Warden thing, or an 'I've had the life nearly choked out of me on multiple occasions' thing, but it served him well. His heart hammered desperately in the hand that clutched it, Justice rising toward the lyrium suddenly in his chest and up his ass, which Anders would freely admit, was not a place he ever expected to have, want, or enjoy lyrium, but his opinions on the subject were changing rapidly.

Still, he fought with Justice, for a few seconds.

 **YOU ARE DYING.**  
 _I am not dying, and you're ruining my good time. Back off._  
 **YOU ARE NOT BREATHING AND YOUR HEART IS STRUGGLING. YOU ARE DYING.**  
 _Andraste's tits, you ignorant creature, whatever it is you're doing, stop it! I am_ this close.  
 **TO DEATH.**  
 _Nooooo! Earlier? With all the throbbing and the howling? I'm about to do some more of that, if you would just piss off and let me._

Just as Fenris managed to focus his eyes again, still distractedly grinding into the mage, Anders bucked under him, choking for breath, as he spilled onto himself, the fluid pooling around Fenris's wrist. Fenris jerked back the hand from Anders's throat, catching himself on the mage's shoulder, as he started to list, and loosened the death grip he'd gotten on Anders's heart.

"Mage?" he panted.

Anders cleared his throat and smiled beatifically. The smile spread out into a grin as he huffed out what might have been a laugh and held up four fingers.

Fenris extracted his other hand, slowly, and clung to Anders's shoulders. "Legendary."

Anders's grin turned cocky.

"Varric lied. It's better." Lifting the hand with the dripping wrist, again, Fenris brought it to his mouth and licked. "Good, but strong," he decided, with a grimace, offering the wrist to Anders, who licked and sucked every drop off him.

Anders tried to say something, but ended up with a few slivers of sound and some rasps. He tilted his head back and forth, remembered to heal his throat, and tried again.

"Worth it?" he asked, unhooking one leg from Fenris's shoulder and stretching it out.

"However opposed I may be to everything you stand for, I would not be opposed to doing this again, if you were willing." Fenris looked down at the sweat and spunk smears on Anders's chest. "Another night. It seems your stamina truly is legendary."

"Do you want me to go?" Anders asked.

"Later. When I can get up." Fenris sighed. "I have to get up, don't I? Or I'll end up touching more of you than I already am."

"Let me try something. If it doesn't work, then yeah, you have to get up." Anders unhooked his other leg and closed his eyes for a moment. "Can you glow for me? Just for a minute."

"What are you doing?" Fenris asked, but the lines flickered to life, if a bit spottily.

The response came in the form of the blue crackle that raced out from the centre of Anders's chest. "Don't worry. You don't have to talk to him. He's not even talking to me, after that. He'll do this, because it's important to my safety, isn't it, Fenris?"

"Yes. Of course it is. I would be most displeased with having to get up. I might have to put you out to cross Hightown in nothing but your boots," Fenris teased, lowering himself onto Justice's blue glow.

"Is it working?"

"I don't feel a driving urge to leap up and tear you to ribbons," Fenris conceded. "What are you going to tell Hawke?"

"That we had dinner, discussed things, and agreed to disagree on the bulk of matters. I might mention we discovered some mutual interests, including wine that doesn't taste like it was dredged from a sewer."

"You don't mean to tell him about this?" Fenris asked curiously.

"If I tell him, he'll tell Isabela. And Isabela will tell Varric. And then there will be a book."

"Should this continue, we will need to inform him, eventually," Fenris pointed out. "He will, in time, become concerned about one or both of us. Most likely you, first."

"If I tell him, he'll want to watch."

"Would you let him?"

"I have let him. Would you?"

"I don't know. I think I have done too much thinking for one night." Fenris tucked his head under Anders's chin. "Goodnight, mage. I promise not to kill you while you sleep."

Just like a cat, Anders thought. Pins you to the floor and goes to sleep, and if you try to pet it, you lose an arm. He struggled to reach the pillow, to pull it back up under his head, before he tried to sleep on this unlickable floor, in a puddle of his own spunk. Elves, cats, he couldn't win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit. I'm done. *deranged cackling* And now it's going to be me, a glass of wine, and contemplation of things I could yet do... Strange and terrible things, no doubt.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] How Far Can Too Far Go? by penbrydd](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5948908) by [mevipodfic (mevima)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mevima/pseuds/mevipodfic)




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